Semantic technologies: from niche to the mainstream of Web 3? A comprehensive framework for web Information modelling and semantic annotation

Context: Web information technologies developed and applied in the last decade have considerably changed the way web applications operate and have revolutionised information management and knowledge discovery. Social technologies, user-generated classification schemes and formal semantics have a far-reaching sphere of influence. They promote collective intelligence, support interoperability, enhance sustainability and instigate innovation. Contribution: The research carried out and consequent publications follow the various paradigms of semantic technologies, assess each approach, evaluate its efficiency, identify the challenges involved and propose a comprehensive framework for web information modelling and semantic annotation, which is the thesis’ original contribution to knowledge. The proposed framework assists web information modelling, facilitates semantic annotation and information retrieval, enables system interoperability and enhances information quality. Implications: Semantic technologies coupled with social media and end-user involvement can instigate innovative influence with wide organisational implications that can benefit a considerable range of industries. The scalable and sustainable business models of social computing and the collective intelligence of organisational social media can be resourcefully paired with internal research and knowledge from interoperable information repositories, back-end databases and legacy systems. Semantified information assets can free human resources so that they can be used to better serve business development, support innovation and increase productivity

Blockchain applications for SME transformation: a pilot framework

As blockchain technology matures, governments, banks, healthcare organisations, asset management companies and other corporations explore the potential of the new technology to transform transactions and improve security, efficiency and profitability. While certain aspects of blockchain, such as decentralisation and immutability, are well understood, the technology has evolved beyond the original Bitcoin blockchain, resulting in the need to provide a framework that classifies blockchain infrastructure and aids potential adoption decision making. The framework is particularly relevant to and urgently needed by SMEs, who stand to benefit from the new technology but are disadvantaged by the lack of knowledge and expertise. This paper follows a pilot study that looks into blockchain applications taxonomy and proposes such a framework

The next generation of the web: an organisational perspective

The web has revolutionised information sharing, management, interoperability and knowledge discovery. The union of the two prominent web frameworks, Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web is often referred to as Web 3.0. This paper explores the basics behind the two paradigms, assesses their influence over organisational change and considers their effectiveness in supporting innovative solutions. It then outlines the challenges of combining the two web paradigms to form Web 3.0 and critically evaluates the impact that Web 3.0 will have on the social organisation. The research carried out follows action research principles and adopts an investigative and reviewing approach to the emerging trends and patterns that develop from the web's changing use, examining the underpinning enabling technologies that facilitate access, innovation and organisational change

Towards the new generation of web knowledge

Purpose - As the web evolves its purpose and nature of its use are changing. The purpose of the paper is to investigate whether the web can provide for the competing stakeholders, who are similarly evolving and who increasingly see it as a significant part of their business. Design/methodology/approach - The paper adopts an exploratory and reviewing approach to the emerging trends and patterns emanating from the web's changing use and explores the underpinning technologies and tools that facilitate this use and access. It examines the future and potential of web-based knowledge management (KM) and reviews the emerging web trends, tools, and enabling technologies that will provide the infrastructure of the next generation web. Findings - The research carried out provides an independent framework for the capturing, accessing and distributing of web knowledge. This framework retains the semantic mark-up, a feature that we deem indispensable for the future of KM, employing web ontologies to structure organisational knowledge and semantic text processing for the extraction of knowledge from web sites. Practical implications - As a result it was possible to identify the implications of integrating the two aspects of web-based KM, namely the business-organisational-users' perspective and that of the enabling web technologies. Originality/value - The proposed framework accommodates the collaborative tools and services offered by Web 2.0, acknowledging the fact that knowledge-based systems are shared, dynamic, evolving resources, whose underlying knowledge model requires careful management due to its constant changing

Identifying trends and flows in Communication and Information Processing by means of keyword network analysis

The purpose of this paper is to identify influential themes and knowledge flows in the area of communications and information processing and suggest trends that are likely to make (or continue making) an impact. We applied keyword network analysis on articles whose keywords match the themes of the International Conference on Communication and Information Processing, collected through the Thompson Reuters’ Web of Science and studied the articles’ thematic interconnections and their dynamics. The keyword network was found to be clustered around the themes cloud, data, mobile, security, semantic and social. Security and embeddedness are found to be the most dominant topics, common to all groups. Design and performance are key influencers of thematic flows and data mining/analysis are close to all nodes/keywords and therefore most popular. Big data, data fusion/integration and e-government are themes identified as potentially strong future influencers

Digital Transformation and Social Business: A Practice-Based Pathway Framework for SMEs

This research focuses on the lessons learnt from case studies involving the digital transformation of three London SMEs. The companies adopted social technologies to renovate operations, develop new sets of skills and capabilities and remodel customer value propositions. The transformation processes had common elements that fed through to the companies’ strategies. We conceptualised our research as a network, regarding roles and interventions as network effects, to analyse the adoption process and dynamically link the technology and social context with digital transformation strategy. The lessons learned were distilled into a framework whose two-fold aim is to (a) support organisations through digital transformation and (b) inform organisational strategy. The framework is modular with components that assist and guide the various phases of designing, deploying, implementing and sustaining this transition

Using XML and XSLT for flexible elicitation of mental-health risk knowledge

Current tools for assessing risks associated with mental-health problems require assessors to make high-level judgements based on clinical experience. This paper describes how new technologies can enhance qualitative research methods to identify lower-level cues underlying these judgements, which can be collected by people without a specialist mental-health background. Methods and evolving results: Content analysis of interviews with 46 multidisciplinary mental-health experts exposed the cues and their interrelationships, which were represented by a mind map using software that stores maps as XML. All 46 mind maps were integrated into a single XML knowledge structure and analysed by a Lisp program to generate quantitative information about the numbers of experts associated with each part of it. The knowledge was refined by the experts, using software developed in Flash to record their collective views within the XML itself. These views specified how the XML should be transformed by XSLT, a technology for rendering XML, which resulted in a validated hierarchical knowledge structure associating patient cues with risks. Conclusions: Changing knowledge elicitation requirements were accommodated by flexible transformations of XML data using XSLT, which also facilitated generation of multiple data-gathering tools suiting different assessment circumstances and levels of mental-health knowledge

Document Analysis Research in the Year 2021

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comInternational audienceDespite tremendous advances in computer software and hardware, certain key aspects of experimental research in document analysis, and pattern recognition in general, have not changed much over the past 50 years. This paper describes a vision of the future where community-created and managed resources make possible fundamental changes in the way science is conducted in such fields. We also discuss current developments that are helping to lead us in this direction